The Filipino Entrepreneur

In today’s changing world, many privileges that an employee gets from the company are slowly diminishing. Like for example an employee that will stick to his or her employer until retirement. This is because of the very competitive nature of our business today; many companies are trying to eliminate their most loyal employees just because of cost reduction. And the most merciful thing that an employer can do is the ‘Golden Handshake’. So many companies turn to outsourcing the jobs to reduce cost. And now we go to the question “How Much is Enough?” and the rich man will say, “Just a little bit more.” ( Greedy, huh? )

One of the most obvious reasons for outsourcing is to access expertise, equipment and experience not available in house or sometimes employer’s kicks-the-butt of those highly paid seniors and be replaced by an outsourcing workforce. Employers indeed save a lot of money and allow the product or services to command a more competitive price thus increasing the sales and productivity. The value of outsourcing is that it can help a business focus on the core area of the business while support will be handled by an outsider.

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The Philippine are already known throughout the world in the area of outsourcing. It is because fluency in language, highly skilled and low labor costs is the primary reasons. For a long time India has conquered the BPO industry. A new player is rising in the arena of Business Process Outsourcing.

Similar to many other Asian countries, the Philippines present competitive costs for their highly skilled talents. This is the main objective of outsourcing. That is why India became the primary outsourcing destination for a long time. And now China is also coming into the scene of outsourcing. However the Philippines’ cutting edge to the other outsourcing Asian countries are being fluent of the English language and intimacy with America. This is why call centers for US based companies are sprouting in the country. Just look at the classified section of Bulletin Today and see the numerous job openings of call centers.

After the Hispanic colonization in the Philippines, Americans came into the scene. The Spaniards has colonized our country for more than 300 years and even Catholism has become our primary religion but American culture was absorbed instantly for a short period of time. And the WW2, Americans was our ally. Also, the Thomasites were the pioneer educators of the English language in the Philippines this is why the educational system was pattered after the Americans. So don’t be amazed when you see Filipinos are more Americanized. This is the disadvantage of other Asian countries in the BPO industry even if they have the most talented people like India or China.

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Just imagine you are in front of a desktop computer and headphones attached to you and your foot on a pedal. While hearing a doctor’s medical report (diagnosis and healing procedures, etc.) and being recorded via state of the art software recorder and transformed into an file in your computer. Then afterwards encoding the report making sure that you catch every detail loud and clear as well as the prescriptions, with accurate spelling and grammar. You run the audio file frequently to catch up with the words dictated by the just to be certain that everything he said was correctly encoded.

This is not just only secretarial work but a medical transcriptionist job. This job is as critical as that of a nurse whereas the emphasis is more on transferring the doctor’s oral report into text. But nonetheless, a medical transcriptionist still acts an important role, as his or her out turn becomes an important document of every medical practitioner. Majority of the hospitals in the U.S. was obligated that all their data to be in digital format, for that reason, the need for medical transcription.

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By Carlo Caparras

The trend of outsourcing inbound and outbound contact centers the past few years have become a billion dollar industry, the main issue here however are the growing acceptance by companies to move their outsourced contact center offshore. The large numbers of Filipino English speaking personnel, Indian technical expertise, and very low cost Chinese labor have proven to be a worthwhile management decision for a lot of industries.

There is no need to discuss the advantages of outsourcing contact centers when even the government itself has begun outsourcing a lot of their public service lines to outsourcing companies. The main discussion right now is how to manage the cost of the outsourcing business on the technology side in the meantime maintain the level of quality control level on the personnel side.

Outsourcing companies normally have technologies geared toward achieving this goal. The price for telecommunication hardware and equipment has been the main financial concern of most contact centers especially the outsourced ones.

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By Richard Mills

Offshore Outsourcing is an emotional subject these days and many senior managers are uncomfortable talking openly about their company’s projects for fear of being labeled unpatriotic job killers. One fellow from California told me that when he accepted a posting to run his company’s offshore facility in Philippines, a number of co-workers came to his office to let him know he was “tearing apart the very fabric of our nation.”

Even big-talking CEO’s, who can usually be counted upon to hype their company’s cost reduction strategies, are often remarkably silent about offshore outsourcing. They seem to put the subject on a similar level as pornography - they all want to sneak a peek at it but none want to admit to do so.

Happily, there are some who will talk about their experiences with Offshore Outsourcing and their comments are useful for the rest of us. Most seem optimistic and think the future of offshore outsourcing is bright. Nevertheless, no one should be misled that running an outsourcing facility in a developing country is a Sunday afternoon picnic. There are serious frustrations that must be contended with.

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